Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!. Victoria Pade

      “Right. And then there was just Abby and me. And my situation had changed—” Jenna leaned forward enough to tickle Abby’s rib cage “—and I wanted this little stinker, so I adopted her.”

      “Which makes you her aunt and her mom now.”

      “Right,” Jenna said in a positive tone to let him know how happy she was to find herself Abby’s mother. “Of course, I’ll let her know about J.J. and her dad, but I’ll really just be Mom—which I’m working on getting her to call me.”

      As if to show her willingness to accept Jenna in that role, Abby finally held out her arms for Jenna to take her.

      Ian set his nearly empty glass of lemonade on the porch and freed the way for Jenna to reach for the infant.

      To do that, Jenna had to slip one of her hands between Abby’s side and Ian’s front. There was no avoiding making contact with him.

      What Jenna should have been able to avoid was being as aware as she was of the hard wall of muscles she felt behind his shirt. And liking the way it felt against the back of her hand …

      You’re a nurse, for crying out loud! You make physical contact with people for a living! she silently chastised herself to battle the tingling that that particular contact had set off along the surface of her skin.

      Gratefully, Ian Kincaid didn’t seem to know she was having that response to him as she lifted Abby from his lap to Jenna’s and became very intent on giving her niece more lemonade.

      “I should probably go—I saw what I came to see and I’m figuring from the scrubs that you must have to get to work at some point,” Ian said then—in a voice that seemed slightly lower than it had been and suddenly made Jenna worry that he did know something was happening with her.

      But even if that was true, he, too, found refuge in Abby by fiddling with one of her curls when he said, “Bye, Abby.”

      “Bye,” Abby answered perfunctorily, waving a chubby hand to go along with it, the way she’d been tutored.

      Then, to Jenna, Ian said, “Thanks for the lemonade. This was nice.”

      “Sure,” was all she said as she watched him get to his feet.

      He paused a moment, and she couldn’t tell what was going through his mind before he said, “Tomorrow night is the grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs—will you be there?”

      “I will be,” she said.

      A slow smile spread across his handsome face. “Good … I’m glad….” He answered almost as if he shouldn’t be admitting it.

      Then he headed for his car, and Jenna watched him go.

      And watched him and watched him, drinking in every last drop of the sight of the best derriere she thought she’d ever seen.

      Until he rounded the side of the house, and she couldn’t see him anymore.

      And she was a little sorry about that …

      So apparently, he hadn’t put a damper on her day.

      But as for the rest—the skin-tingling on contact, the ogling of his backside when he’d walked away, the fact that she’d enjoyed spending that brief time with him?

      She didn’t know where any of that had come from.

      But she did know that there was no place in her life for it.

      Not now. Not with him.

      In the last eleven months, she’d gone from one disaster to another. The death of J.J. and of Abby’s dad. Her own divorce. Her mother’s death. Her father’s. The tax debacle and the likelihood that she was going to lose the farm. She’d gone from chaos to more chaos to even more chaos.

      And it had to end. For both her own sake and for Abby’s. They needed to find a little solace, a little calm, a little peace. To settle down, to settle in. Together. Just the two of them.

      Nowhere in any of that was there a place for skin-tingling or ogling or enjoying Ian Kincaid’s company.

      In fact, a man—any man—but certainly Ian Kincaid of all men, was the anti-solace, the anti-calm, the anti-peace, the anti-settling down, the anti-settling in.

      And Jenna wasn’t having any part of that.

      So why was she suddenly looking forward to tomorrow night’s grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs even more than she had been?

      It didn’t matter why.

      She just knew she needed to squash it.

      And that was what she was determined to do.

      Although that little bit of a thrill at the thought that Ian Kincaid would be there was hard to catch and squash when it again took flight at merely the glimpse of him behind the wheel of his car as he drove from the side of her house and waved on his way to the main road.

      But still she was determined.

      Peace and calm and solace, settling in, settling down—that was what she was going to find, to achieve, for herself and for Abby.

      Without the disruption of a guy who made her skin tingle …

       Chapter Three

      “What do you think, Abby? Too much?” Jenna asked her niece as she stood in front of the full-length mirror early Monday evening.

      Of course, Abby didn’t respond. The fifteen-month-old was occupied with the bottom drawer of Jenna’s dresser, exploring and dragging out every scarf, glove and whatnot she found there.

      After feeding Abby dinner, Jenna had taken the baby upstairs with her and set her in the crib with a slew of toys to keep her safely entertained so Jenna could take a quick shower and shampoo her hair.

      Then she’d retrieved Abby and brought the little girl with her to her bedroom, where she’d set Abby on the floor. Being let loose in Jenna’s room always meant one of two things for the infant—either she played in the closet or she opened the bottom dresser drawer. Since Jenna had had problems picking out what to wear tonight, Abby had already demolished the closet and moved on to the drawer.

      But Jenna was intent on looking her best for the grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs.

      The cocktail affair was to be casual, but somehow Jenna didn’t want to go too casual. So while she’d opted for jeans, they were her dressiest jeans—jeans she’d paid a small fortune for because they rode every curve to perfection and managed to transform her rear end into a much better shape than she thought it had on its own.

      To go along with the jeans, she was wearing a black, crocheted-lace blouse over a strapless black, spandex tube top. And for shoes she was trying on her post-divorce-first-night-on-the-town-with-the-girls-to-prove-she-could-still-get-hit-on shoes—peekaboo-toed, black patent leathers with bows and four-inch heels.

      And she had gotten hit on that night. In those shoes. And that same outfits….

      Not that she was aiming to get hit on tonight, of course. She wasn’t. She just wanted to look good. This was really the first fancy evening social event she’d gone to since being back in Northbridge.

      And the fact that Ian Kincaid was going to be there? That he’d made a point of asking if she was going to be there, too?

      Okay, maybe that had a teensy, weensy bit to do with the fact that she wanted to look good. But that was all. And it was just a matter of pride. Yes, her father had died owing the government over forty-thousand dollars in unpaid taxes that she couldn’t pay, either; yes, Ian Kincaid and the Kincaid Corporation might be able to get her father’s farm and turn it into a football training center, whether she liked it or not, but she still had her dignity. And that outfit and those shoes.

      And